I do, I feel like we desperately need some more competition/options in the browser engine space.

I basically have one primary criteria in choosing operating systems: I want the one that gets the least in my way doing the things I want to do (whether that’s something productive or entertainment). I don’t care that I’m using Linux, it just happens to be Linux (or a Linux distro) that’s currently better at getting out of my way than Windows (or macOS, or any other OS).

I’ve been evaluating Linux on my desktop like once per year maybe, and until recently Windows always won in terms of getting out of my way. I was using Windows 10 LTSC IoT before (because guess what: it got in my way less than regular Windows 10/11) and it was pretty good honestly, but what finally tipped the scales over for me was that Microsoft decided to let an update add unwanted entries into my start menu and re-enable the stupid search field in the task bar.

So I re-evaluated different Linux distributions last year, eventually landed on Fedora and together with swapping my Nvidia RTX 3080 for a Radeon 7800 XT for better Linux compatibility (especially with Wayland) and also Valve’s Proton getting better and better, I started using a Linux distro full-time on my desktop January 1st, 2024.

Stuck with Fedora for a few months and landed at openSUSE Tumbleweed (after some annoyances regarding SELinux and other things iirc with the Fedora 40 update). Tumbleweed or rather the fact that it’s bleeding edge had its fair share of issues in the last days (with some big releases like Mesa 24.1, Plasma 6.1 and some other packages being relatively buggy). This made me think about using a more stable distro like Debian or openSUSE Leap (I know there’s also Slowroll, but some issues Tumbleweed has also roll over to it), but then again I pretty much always have fairly recent hardware in my PC, which usually demands somewhat recent kernels and other packages.

If I find that Windows gets less in my way tomorrow than what I’m currently using, I’ll consider switching to Windows. Or macOS. Or Debian. Or FreeBSD. Etc.

rclone supports Proton Drive, no need to run a Windows VM for that.

Porting games to a different architecture is normally quite a bit more involved than just recompiling them, especially when architecture-agnostic code wasn’t a design goal of the original game code. No, Valve couldn’t release all their games natively running on ARM tomorrow, the process would take more time.

But even if Valve were to recompile all their games for ARM, many other studios wouldn’t just because a few gaming handhelds would benefit from it. The market share of these devices wouldn’t be big enough to justify the cost. Very few of the games that run on Steam Deck are actually native Linux versions, studios just rarely bother porting their games over.

I’m not saying ARM chips can’t be faster or otherwise better (more efficient) at running games, but it just doesn’t make sense to release an ARM-based handheld intended for “PC” gaming in the current landscape of games.

Apple can comparatively easily force an architecture transition because they control fhe software and hardware. If Apple decides to only sell RISC-V based Macs tomorrow and abandon ARM, developers for the platform would have to release RISC-V builds of their software because at some point nobody could run their software natively anymore because current Macs would be replaced by RISC-V Macs as time passed by. Valve does not control the full hard- and software stack of the PC market so they’d have a very hard time to try and force such a move. If Valve released an ARM-based gaming handheld, other manufacturers would still continue offering x86-based handhelds with newer and newer CPUs (new x86 hardware is still being developed for the foreseeable future) and instead of Valve forcing developers to port their games to native ARM, they’d probably lose market share to these other handhelds as people would naturally buy the device that runs current games best right now.

In a “perfect world” where all games would natively support ARM right now an ARM-based handheld for PC gaming could obviously work. That simply isn’t the world we live in right now though. Sure we could ramble on about “if this and that”, it’s just not the reality.

As you said yourself, it’s not the same thing. Proton can occasionally beat Windows because Vulkan might be more efficient doing certain things compared to DirectX (same with other APIs getting translated to other API calls). This is all way more abstract compared to CPU instruction sets.

If Qualcomm actually managed to somehow accurately (!) run x86 code faster on their ARM hardware compared to native x86 CPUs on the same process node and around the same release date, it would mean they are insanely far ahead (or, depending on how you look at it, Intel/AMD insanely far behind).

And as I said, any efficiency gains in idle won’t matter for gaming scenarios, as neither the CPU nor the GPU idle at any point during gameplay.

With all that being said: I think Qualcomm did a great job and ARM on laptops (outside of Apple) might finally be here to stay. But they won’t replace x86 laptops anytime soon, and it’ll take even longer to make a dent in the PC gaming market because DIY suddenly becomes very relevant. So I don’t think (“PC”) gaming handhelds should move to ARM anytime soon.

No, that’s not at all what I said. Translating between CPU architectures and translating API calls isn’t even close to the same thing.

Yeah, it’s also not “just” if it’s one of what feels like hundreds of steps now to make the OS somewhat usable.

If both AMD/Intel and Qualcomm do a good job with their core design and the same process node is used, I don’t see how a translation layer can be any faster than a CPU natively supporting the architecture. Any efficiency advantages ARM supposedly has over x86 architecturally will vanish in such a scenario.

I actually think the efficiency of these new Snapdragon chips is a bit overhyped, especially under sustained load scenarios (like gaming). Efficiency cores won’t do much for gaming, and their iGPU doesn’t seem like anything special.

We need a lot more testing with proper test setups. Currently, reviewers mostly test these chips and compare them against other chips in completely different devices with a different thermal solution and at different levels of power draw (TDP won’t help you much as it basically never matches actual power draw). Keep in mind the Snapdragon X Elite can be configured for up to “80W TDP”.

Burst performance from a Cinebench run doesn’t tell the real story and comparing runtimes for watching YouTube videos on supposedly similar laptops doesn’t even come close to representing battery life in a gaming scenario.

Give it a few years/generations and then maybe, but currently I’m pretty sure the 7840U comfortably stomps the X Elite in gaming scenarios with both being configured to a similar level of actual power draw. And the 7840U/8840U is AMD’s outgoing generation, their new (horribly named) chips should improve performance/watt by quite a bit.

Not sure why you’d want an ARM-based handheld to play PC games at this point in time. Pretty much all PC games are available in x86 only, and any efficiency gains these fancy new ARM chips supposedly have will be lost when translating x86 to ARM.

RIP and thank you for your contributions!

Well I was planning to get a new iPhone that fully supports Apple Intelligence, but if Apple can’t swallow their pride by properly opening up their platform but would rather leave out headlining features, I guess I won’t.

No one is forcing people to use Apple devices. That’s not what this is about.

It’s about other services trying to reach potential customers that happen to be using an iPhone. Spotify has to go through the App Store if they want to reach any customers on the second largest mobile platform. And Apple themselves have a lot of advantages concerning integrating their own music streaming service into the OS while Spotify is limited by the rules Apple sets, including taking 30% of any subscription made through the App Store.

Ping your own VPS?

Apparently she tweeted it, didn’t she? So even if she tweeted it as a response to an ongoing discussion on X, this tweet would’ve been read by many as-is, and the tweet itself wouldn’t have provided a lot of context.

With that being said, I still don’t think her original statement logically made a lot of sense.

That’s all I’m saying bud :) just my opinion.

Where did I say that it’s racist? I said it’s not a good comment to make, purely from a logical standpoint.

Why do I think it’s not a good comment to make? Because I don’t think there should be any relation made to skin color at all in this case. Some of the best soccer players in the world/country just happen to have a certain skin color.

She makes it seem like an all-white team would definitely be worse (or better) compared to the current lineup, even if there were 11 white players objectively better at soccer than all other players that could’ve made up the team.

She could’ve said “the team is as good as it is because we didn’t discriminate between skin colors when picking the best players”. That would’ve brought her intended message across.

I’m guessing that’s what she meant, but I think no matter which way she meant it (either that the team would be worse all-white or better all-white), it’s not a good comment to make either way as I don’t see how skin color relates to skill.

I highly doubt most do, just that the percentage of Linux users may be higher than on many other platforms.

The most used platform for Lemmy is likely still Windows or a mobile OS.

Well it still technically does give them a list, it’s just that even with the list there are a lot of combinations.

So I guess Apple’s stupid “Core Technology Fee” definitely has to go.

The way this sounds though maybe a lot more has to change though. Maybe their whole verification process is unlawful as well.

I think their services are generally pretty good, yes.

But their frontends really aren’t. Their web apps are serviceable for desktop use. The Proton Mail desktop app is essentially the web app in an Electron or CEF wrapper. But on the desktop you can at least use Proton Bridge to then use whatever IMAP mail client you want.

On mobile, you can’t. You have to use their services with the corresponding app they provide on Android and iOS. I moved from iCloud Mail to Proton just a few weeks ago (and I also had Proton a few years ago), which meant I had to switch from the default iOS “Mail” app to the Proton Mail app, as Proton doesn’t support IMAP without a bridge (naturally, as IMAP doesn’t support end-to-end encryption).

Unfortunately the Proton Mail app is not a fully native app but instead it must be using React Native or something similar. It’s a low effort port of the web app, meaning very few integrations with iOS were actually done. For example, Apple Mail can show the email content in the notification, Proton Mail doesn’t. At least you can mark mails as read in the notification, but you can only see the subject line without opening the app. Offline functionality is very limited as mail contents aren’t cached on device, which can also make opening specific mails very slow (comparatively at least), and overall the app just feels less responsive compared to a native Swift UI app. UI animations aren’t “attached to your finger”, instead they just fully play once triggered no matter what. Calendar attachments just show up as an .ics file that you then have to download and open to add them to your calendar instead of just having a simple “Add to calendar” button.

But the worst part is that the iPad version is basically just the iPhone version blown up to fill the screen. It doesn’t have a multi-column layout with your inbox on the left and the selected mail on the right. Nope, just like on the phone app, you open a single mail, it takes over the whole screen and you have to go back to your inbox again.

For that reason I didn’t even bother with their calendar service.

The VPN app is fine. The iPad app is the same blown up iPhone app as well, but you don’t actively use the app for more than a few seconds to pick and connect to a server, so I don’t care.

Proton Pass is a little bit better (it’s also newer I think), it does have a separate iPad layout. It also integrates well with their email alias service (SimpleLogin, although the SimpleLogin service standalone is a bit different still). I still use 1Password though because of the SSH Agent integration on desktop and it also comes with a Safari iOS browser extension for additional convenience features over just the native OS integration for password managers.

I actually use SimpleLogin and while it’s technically not an OG Proton service, you do get their Premium service included with your Proton subscription (Proton owns SimpleLogin now). Very good service and hey, it has a pretty solid iOS app.

I didn’t really use Proton Drive yet, but I’ll probably use it for archiving some stuff by just uploading it through the web interface. Last time I checked they didn’t have a native Linux client yet (for Dropbox-like folder sync), but somebody hacked support into rclone I think, although the API isn’t documented on Proton’s part, so it’s probably not super-reliable.

That’s it, right? Apparently Proton might acquire Simple Notes, and I’d sure take that included in my subscription, although I feel like Proton should focus on vastly improving their existing services first before they broaden their portfolio.